Archie Williams served 37 years for a rape and stabbing he didn't commit. Thanks to the persistence and hard work of Innocence Project Litigation Director Vanessa Plotkin, the Louisiana Innocence Project, and Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck , Archie was freed from prison in 2019 when fingerprint evidence in an FBI database proved him innocent and identified the real perpetrator -- a serial rapist, now long deceased. What took so long? For years, Louisiana's state laws provided barriers to inmates' requests to access untested evidence for innocence claims, and many other procedural hurdles. The I.P. began working on Archie's case in 1996.

In the video above, watch Archie fulfill his dream of singing on the big stage, during a recent episode of "America's Got Talent". The audience response and response of the judges, including Simon Cowell, is wonderful to watch.

After learning about Archie and the Innocence Project, Barry confirmed that Simon has signed on to be an Ambassador for the project. [More...]

Alan Dershowitz has a terrific op-ed in the Wall St. Journal, "A Nightmare of False Accusation That Could Happen to You."

I don't know how he tells the whole story in one op-ed column, but he does. My last post on his current travails was 5,000 words.

Go read Dershowitz. You'll learn a few things about the shortcomings of the criminal justice system. As he puts it, if there's no legal recourse available to someone with all of his resources, what does it mean for the rest of us? [More....]

Kenneth Ireland of Connecticut was 17 when he was arrested for raping and killing a woman. During his police interrogation, he maintained his innocence. He was 18 when he was tried and convicted. 21 years later, in 2009, he was freed after DNA evidence showed he did not commit the crime, and the real perpetrator was identified, tried, convicted and sentenced.

A state commissioner will decide Ireland's compensation, which may be up to $8 million. During testimony this week Ireland described the horror he experienced daily in prison.

I wish it were an actual nightmare ... because then I could have woken up instead of spending 21 years in a tiny cell with the most violent criminals who targeted me because I was a convicted sex offender."

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Some justice at last to the Central Park Five -- New York City agreed to pay $40 million to the five Black and Latino men wrongfully charged as teens with the rape of a Central Park jogger in 1989.

Kharey Wise, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam were exonerated in 2002. They filed their lawsuit in 2003. It has taken the city 12 years to finally pay up.

Four of them served 7 years in prison and one served 13 years. Their convictions, largely the product of false and coerced confessions, were overturned when the true perpetrator, Mattias Reyes confessed. DNA evidence confirmed he was the rapist, and although he could not be charged due to the statute of limitations, by the time of his confession he was already serving a 33 year to life sentence for other rapes. More background here. Also see When Justice is a Game and Marked as the Enemy, and New Light on Jogger's Rape Calls Evidence Into Question.[More...]

Robert Dewey served 17 years of a life sentence for a Colorado rape and murder DNA evidence later proved he did not commit.

After release from prison in 2012, he had nothing. In June, Colorado passed a law (available here) allowing up to $70,000. a year compensation to the wrongly convicted. Dewey was present when Governor Hickenlooper signed the bill into law.

A Colorado judge has now approved a $1.2 million settlement to Dewey. 5280 Magazine has a long feature article on Dewey's journey, Resurrection.

Of note: [More...]

The 141st wrongfully convicted death row inmate in the U.S. was released from jail today after serving 15 years for a crime he didn't commit. Damon Thibodeaux, now 38, left prison today. The cause of his wrongful conviction: A false confession. Later DNA testing excluded him as the perpetrator of the crime.

Nationally, DNA has freed 18 wrongfully convicted death row inmates.

John Edward Smith, imprisoned for the past 19 years for a murder he did not commit, walked out of court a free man yesterday.

It was not DNA evidence that freed him, but perjured testimony at his trial. The sole eyewitness at his trial admitted lying.

Prosecutors told the judge they were convinced that the lone eyewitness to the 1993 shooting had lied at Smith’s trial, naming him as the gunman. Smith maintained he was at his grandmother’s house when the shooting occurred several blocks away.

The witness said said he was pressured by police to identify Smith as the shooter. [More...]

A hearing is underway in federal court in North Carolina to determine whether new evidence, when considered collectively rather than piecemeal, is sufficient to overturn the murder convictions of former Army surgeon and Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald, imprisoned since 1982 for the 1970 Charles Manson-style attack on his wife and daughters.

Here is the 2008 order denying relief. In 2011, the Appeals court reversed and ordered a new hearing. [More...]

What a nightmare. In 1996, Kristin Bunch was 21, pregnant and living in a mobile home with her three year old. A sudden fire engulfed the trailer, killing her three year old. The police said it was arson and claimed she went into her son's bedroom, doused it with a liquid accelerant like kerosene or diesel fuel and set it on fire. She was charged and convicted of felony murder and arson and sentenced to 60 years in prison. Arson investigators testified at her trial that burn patterns indicated the fire was arson.

After 16 years in prison, she was released on bond today pending a retrial, and went home with her jubilant mother and now 16 year old son (whom she gave birth to in prison.) In March, the Indiana Court of Appeals set aside her conviction, finding it was based on invalid, outdated science and the prosecutor had withheld critical evidence at her trial. (Great work by Kristin's post-conviction team, including the Center on Wrongful Convictions.)[More..}

Andre Davis, now 50 years old, left a maximum security prison in Illinois today, after serving 32 years for a rape and murder that DNA evidence has proven he didn't commit.

A federal court overturned his conviction when DNA tests not available at the time of his trial came back with a finding that the blood and semen found at the crime scene were not those of Davis.

Prosecutors earlier today said they will not recharge him. Did the DNA tests sway them? Not much.

[Prosecutor] Reitz said that while she didn't doubt the results of the DNA tests, she decided not to retry Davis because of the difficulty in taking a 32-year-old case to trial — not because of those tests.

Davis requested the DNA testing in 2004. Why did it take 8 years to free him?

Robert Dewey, a Colorado inmate sentenced to life without parole for murder, left jail today a free man after serving 18 years of his sentence. DNA testing, using a technology not available at the time of his conviction, proved he was innocent.

Dewey is the 290th person to be exonerated nationwide on the basis of DNA evidence proving factual innocence -- meaning someone else committed the crime.

"I find that Mr. Dewey is factually innocent of the crimes of which he was accused of in this case," the judge said, noting Dewey had spent more the 6,000 days behind bars. "Mr. Dewey is now again a free man."

[More...]

Four great job opportunities at The Innocence Project in New York: Two for lawyers, one for an online communications director and one for a field organizer.

Did anyone catch Jeopardy last week when this question was asked?